The Outbound Story

Hey guys, Matt here, this is the Outbound Lighting story:

The story really began many moons ago when I had seen a photo that my buddy Kyle had posted on his Facebook page showing him and his friends out for a night ride. Since I was an automotive lighting engineer I was curious about the lights that they were using. Turns out they were very well-respected name brand lights (won’t name them here!), and after looking at more and more lights on the market I had noticed that no one was using what was now commonplace in the automotive industry in terms of lighting design and performance.

Every light was still using a large powerful LED sitting in a reflector shaped like a cone to create a spot like beam pattern. Knowing how lighting is designed it perplexed me as to why no one was using the latest chips or the newest in design software to develop what I knew was possible with lighting. After lots of debate, some concept drawings and a few beers with friends; an idea was born, a company was formed, and I started heavy engineering design on the Focal Series light.

Months later a prototype was born, a rough validation showed I was on the right path, and further refinements in both the reflector and the housing shaped it into the design that we see today on the original Focal Series lamps. 7 months after the first idea, Outbound launched the design on Kickstarter at the end of November. Within 30 days nearly $30,000 was raised by 157 people who believed that lighting needed a new revolution, doubling the original goal of $15,000.

6 months later after lots of waiting, tweaking, testing, validating, and a few redesigns the first backers received their lights. Everyone has been thrilled with it, with many mentions about how it was one of the best Kickstarters they had backed. Total transparency, constant updates, and a willingness to teach others about lighting spearheaded the campaign and translates into how I operate Outbound Lighting today.

Today we are building and shipping the lights from our workshop just outside of St. Louis, MO. I am constantly working on bringing the next big thing from the automotive space to bike lighting and I am excited to showcase what real engineered lighting is like!